June 17, 2010

My heart immediately sank deep into an experience of sorrow. When I get that way, I let my fingers walk through Google to clarify what I am feeling with facts. I found a few websites of facts on the implications of this health hazard.

3. Then I read this information on the Impact of Benzene on Leukemia and Lymphoma provided by a law firm, BarronBudd.com. This research summarized in this site on how Benzene as a hazard and exposure can lead to Leukemia and Lymphoma.

After reading this, my mother's voice went off in my head; the message she use to give me when she was angry and had to "tell me I told you so."

I found this cartoon from Huffington Post that contained a picture that replaces the thousands of words communicated in media every day that could force me to forget and bury my head in the sand re: this hazard that is going to impact the health of people living by the #BP #Oil Spill.

I chose empathy today and I chose to be awake and not deny this problem. Is there anyone out there that cares to join me.

It has gotten very simple for me. At present, there is a lot of attention on legislation for chemicals to make sure we assure safety for people and exercise precaution related to the 80,000 chemicals now used in products on the market. The legislation often implies we have to make priority the chemicals based on their volume of use.

Science now tells us that the amount of chemicals (volume used) does not dictate the impact of a chemical even in a small amount. Therefore substitution of chemicals of immediate concern has to have a new approach of examining the chemical, the amount of chemical and hazard potential.

ChemSec.org is an educational center in Europe that exists as a non profit for the purpose of creating a "toxic free world."

At their website, ChemSec describes the focus of their work as

"CHEMSEC - for a toxic free world

" Our focus is to highlight the risks of hazardous substances and influence and speed up legislative processes. We act as a catalyst for open dialogue between authorities, business and NGOs and collaborate with companies committed to taking the lead. All of our work is geared to stimulating public debate and action on the necessary steps towards a toxic free world. "

This week, I have had to deepen my empathy for the millions of people who have lives challenged by chemical exposure.

There are currently two reports in my collection that can open anyone's eyes to the opportunity represented by the BP Oil Spill Catastrophe.

June 13, 2010

Today, I sought some quiet to begin to imagine the world without BP. In my life-time and through my work, I have had opportunity to think in this way. The last time was when I began to imagine life without Digital Equipment Corporation.

Since the BP Oil Spill occurred, I have been reading and listening to news reports portraying the views of reporters, leaders and analysts that I respect. One such leader and analyst is Simon Thomas, founder of Trucost.com. Simon has turned his personal mission to build sustainable investment analytics and metrics by building a highly skilled and innovative network of people he has by founding Trucost.com. Simon's blog post this week provided context and relevance to what I have been synthesizing in my own mind since the beginning of the BP Oil spill.

"Since I founded over a decade ago I have often feared that it would take an environmental disaster for capital markets and society in general to start taking the environmental impacts of companies seriously.

In the same way that the Enron and Parmalat crises catapulted corporate governance into the mainstream investment agenda, so the BP oil spill is likely to change investment behaviour forever.

The Deepwater Horizon crisis is of course the result of a terrible accident and terrible accidents are impossible to predict reliably. Research providers struggle as much as anyone else in predicting such events; they are not clairvoyants.

Clearly the extent of the environmental impacts that are associated with the oil industry are well known, despite the concerted attempts of oil company public relations executives to paint an entirely more benign."

that the event was generating in his opinion" a lot of words to describe an event that is, at heart, about ... living within our means, understanding that we are interdependent and getting the accounting right."

I began to take note of a swarm that has grown around me over past few weeks in various leaving me an ache inside my gut that is loudly shouting that "we can no longer afford more of the same." This voice has echoed loudly numerous times through my life.

To get to the point of thinking about life after BP, I remembered a number of devastating catastrophe's that I have experienced or witnessed. I was born and currently live in Boston. People from Boston are very stoic. The experience of catastrophe or devastation to the New England economy is not new to most born here. There are very reminders of my numerous experiences with catastrophes with polio epidemics, hurricanes, recessions, fuel shortages and wide spread shut down due to a domino effect of lost industry. New England has a rich history in its experience of economic harm suffered from lost manufacturing, challenges to the fishing industry, lost defense contracts and the Harvard Community's HMO put into state receivership.

I remember in 1986, the explosion of the Space Shuttle, Challenger explosion took the lives of 7 astronauts

Americans had to own that their perfect space program could make mistakes and the magnitude of a mistake could take the lives of people.

Shortly after that experience, I found myself working and living in a community of people employed directly by Digital Equipment Corporation or within DEC's supply chain. Ken Olsen as CEO could not see that the personal computing revolution was going to overtake his obstinate view that DEC mini computers would dominate the market. This resulted in a loss of business that reduced a global workforce from 160,000 workers globally to approximately 35,000 workers who were absorbed into a Compaq acquisition followed by the 1990's HP acquisition of Compaq.

I lived in the Bay Area during the next two recessions and watched more Fortune 2000 companies disappear, e.g. Amdhal. By the end of 1993, I had seen the impact of pervasive downsizing of 800,000 workers in California destroy communities, make families homeless and strip children of any hope for a future.

Around 1994, while living in Cupertino, CA, (home of Apple.com) during one of my numerous episodes of layoff, I participated as a volunteer in a meeting of a community group with the Superintendent of the Cupertino School System). As a member of this group, I was privy to the results of a school based study to diagnose why children in the Cupertino School System were malnourished.

The findings of this study challenged a very "thick denial" in the room by the wealthy people in the room, who were not personally derailed by the recession. These people were shocked to learn their neighbors who were laid off could not feed their children. Most of these children were going through a school day with no food, because their parents had lost their jobs. Parallel to this study in San Jose, CA diagnosed the source of a growing homeless problem in San Jose. The problem was accelerating as a result of economic challenged families; the homeless population no longer could simply be seen described as the drug addicted, alcoholic or depressed PTSD diagnosed Veterans.

This past week, John Sculley, former CEO of Apple 35 years ago, spoke with Daily Beast's Thomas Weber about his regrets and rift with now Apple CEO, Steve Jobs in 1986. Do you think it has occurred to Sculley to examine the harm that he followed by Michael Spindler, CEO of Apple in the early 90's? These layoffs and a phase of decline grew out of the rift with Jobs that Sculley sparked and spiraled into a recession that left children malnourished and causing families to lose their homes.

Through May and into early June, as the BP Oil Spill continued and I did my best to absorb the implications of the message from the Global Reporting Conference 2010 and the overwhelming value of reports from the Ceres 2010 Conference, the week prior to GRI, I found myself at a meeting in Washington DC with a safe chemical community partnership that has been formed to help lobby and advocate for to revise update US Chemical legislation and policy.

Hard working people from around the country attended this meeting. They represented Ngo's, corporations and government agencies, Everyone participated with a sincerity and intent to have impact. The meeting was well designed, informative and presented an opportunity for quality networking.

Along with my experience of research re: REACH and Non-ionizing radiation, I left the meeting knowing intuitively all the quality legislation in the world in any country will not prevent the equivalent of a chemical BP Oil Spill. All the legislation passed cannot protect people from disasters as they occur if business perpetuates a culture of harm, government invests and writes laws of fear that create expensive bureaucracies and non profits continue a focus of raising philanthropic investment for media campaigns and protests that create confusion and do not empower learning to lead change and repair harm.

This week, the volume of my intuitive message increased in decibels. This voice was shouting in my head as loudly as it did during other occassions when

I resigned from Harvard's HMO in the early 80's;

I experienced the DEC frenzy resulting in my layoff late 80's,

The eruption of E-commerce turning into a recession in the late 90's;

I returned from California to Boston in 1999, to witnessed the full cycle of harm from years of financial mismanagement that put Harvard Pilgrim Health Care in receivership.

What is MIssing?

That question has been burning in side of me since I returned to Boston from WDC last week from the meeting related to TSCA and Safe Chemicals.

Nothing is going to escape what I know is the only way to construct an economy of change through lots of people to bring about a new form of complex work that breathes life into the global and local economies to become a living ecosystem of sustainability. Within companies, government entities and non profits that oversee the payrolls of workers , who want to carry out their jobs with the intent to live stable lives there is now absolutely no escape from doing the hard work that it means to assure and build a sustainable economy.

You see it would have taken hard work to synchronize the medical record system at Harvard Pilgrim with the financial system; and more hard work to get the information organized and feeding in synch with the hospitals that billed Harvard Pilgrim insurance. This was know years ago even before my resignation in the early 1980's when I made the decision to leave while I could still be viewed a success. For some reason my voice among many other hard workers was not heard.

Many at Digital Equipment Corporation knew that Ken Olsen's view of mini computing was not responsive to the new frontier of personal computing. The people could not counter act Ken Olsen's stubbornness and the harm that followed.

I recall at one point in grad school seeing a film simulating the engineering conversation about the Challenger where one male engineer's voice expressing concern about something faulty was overlooked and what he said diminished. I recalled a conference call I attended with a major petroleum company (not BP), earlier in this decade with a team was working with an $800K investment in software for an oil and drill knowledge management system. Again those of us who were hard working, questioned how a corporation could invest $800k in a system that was not put into wide use, could not get heard.

Many say they are confused by the term sustainability and don't know what it means. Let me offer you a simple definition I provided to Aman Singh, Vault.com's CSR correspondent, in a review of Kathrin Winkler's role at EMC as Chief Sustainability Officer,

" sustainability is based on a simple premise: 'corporate sustainability is really about business survival: Take the long view, or your business won't survive in a failing global society or environment. Long-term sustainability affects customers, employees, suppliers, neighbors, partners, governmental bodies, and civil society. If we make our business choices based on how we interact with those stakeholders, then we are promoting sustainability."

Let me in this moment return the chemical agenda I have been researching that has grown out of Europe's REACH legislation and the movement of other countries to adopt this regulation or build new legislative platforms e.g. the US revision of TSCA.

Again somewhere in the crowd is a chemist who understands that one of the 80,000+ chemicals in use in a small amount may be showing signs of doing wide spread harm and at present this chemist cannot prove it. This hard working individual has an idea that needs research and support and encouragement but from a financial view and from the perspective of shareholder investment pushing on the perception of this voice who understands it is necessary that a large volume of this chemical is in use.

REACH regulation contains a 1 ton qualifier. It does not apply to a potential chemical in use where the proportion is much smaller than the potential harm. There are now 350+ chemicals that have been identified that are worthy of research and further investigation that are not based on this 1 Ton in use qualifier. The 1 Ton qualifier diminishes the voice of a hard working chemist or health professional, who loves his/her job or has a feeling in his/her gut that a chemical they recognize should be of concern. This is one point of vulnerability of many that investors and economic decision makers or company leaders never gain insight into potential harm.

In following the rapid change over the past few years at General Electric and Walmart, I have been slowly grasping what it means when a major global corporation views itself as an economy rather than a company and a player that influences the natural ebb and ecological flow of an economy. Neither GE or Walmart have perfected their science and they are demonstrating methods of continuous learning that convene the small voices of natural leadership to do the hard work that assures a viable scientific agenda and resources to assure no harm.

This week, Elaine Cohen, found a hidden jewel in Warren Buffet's complex of business. She found one company Shaw Floors wrote a CSR report., I wondered if this could be a door of possibility through which Berkshire Industries might follow Walmart and General Electric and begin to lead itself as a sustainable economy? I am holding similar thoughts for HP to do the same. Last week, I learned that HP's material purchases from its supply chain over 179 countries totals $79B. I bet HP could benefit from sitting at the table with GE and Walmart it may find a formula to invest in the research of numerous chemist within its supply chain to exercise precaution based on the Earth Charter Principle to do no harm.

This week after a sinus infection, I discovered a love for mixing Trader Joes' rasberry and lemon sorbet to lighten that sour feeling in my mouth from learning to be patient as people in reaction from all sectors learn to stop the BP oil gush and sort out a system by which to repair harm and prevent further harm. Hopefully the press and community voices and groups will move into a format of reporting on the emerging resources and activities that are surfacing to repair the trauma, harm and fee of unproductive chaos of reaction.

May 16, 2010

Human beings want to know that their work makes a difference and in a
very simple way. Work is equated with what you do to earn and the
business associated with that (in any sector). The Swedish word for
business is Narings Liv. Narings Liv defines business as that
which nourishes you for life. To me this is the core value for how I have made sense of a community for myself over the past few years.

This strong community that surrounds me all are able to contribute to making the vision for a WorkEcology Portal real. This community includes the good people I have mentioned in this blog here over the past six months.

My blog posts are a living history that tells the story of what I have learned with these people. Our conversations have shaped into an equation of what brings a sustainable strategy to life through stakeholder engagement and supports collaboration among people who work wisely to live well in their local communities.

Last night, at my screen, my former neighbor and friend, Dave Wann
reached out to me and asked me to scan his new book, The New Normal. Dave's life and his work are about documenting how people are creating their lives in the era of Sustainability. What is unusual about that is that Dave in fact is doing it personally from his home and garden in Harmony Village, in Golden Co.

I have been talking with Dave for quite some time about his forthcoming book because it comes out of our shared interest and dialogue that focused on the question, "How do you live your life to sustain your health, work and economic stability?" The Presidents Panel on Cancer is resource for examining this question from a view of, "How do you today's citizens work and live their lives in away that protects health?" And how do we create a sustainable system of health that permits every citizen to live in a world that "exercises precaution?"

Can stakeholders in a system of health whether commercial business (insurance and products), health service and advocacy groups influence a change in systems of health care delivery where the consumer can regain financial control and eliminate the stress so many now experience that is bankrupting people and families every day who face a life with a chronic or life threatening illness?"

So the tension of all this thinking has been simmering in me to do some interesting writing as I review the #ceres10 meeting results. I feel a bit this week like a simmering stock pot pot on the stove that is ready to overflow as I pull together all the new ingredients I have found for my writing, analysis and thought leadership.

This week, I noticed that within my advice network, numerous people I learn with have been asking some really tough questions as they think about matters representing their own inquiry into some really tough questions:

Aman Singh, @vaultcsr, has continued her series of article in her blog column In Good Company, Vault's CSR Blog. Aman's focus in recent weeks has been to look at the implications of CSR to a company from a view of governance, brand, professional development and ultimately the key question to why people read @vaultcsr; if people take the time in any career stage and money to obtain CSR or Sustainable Management education, who will employ me and why in a recession economy? Aman is an early post this month struck upon an analysis that aligns with my thinking and work; Corporate CEO's prefer governance to sustainability.

Elaine Cohen, @elainecohen, began the week thinking about CSR and the Rat Race. Elaine's wit is valuable and entertaining. She points out in this edition of her blog that we think of the "rat race" as something negative;when in fact rats are naturally community minded. Rats live in colonies of collaboration have been of meaningful are to space exploration and sustainable agriculture. Rats are somewhat like CSR reporting. Some people look on CSR reports as a negative, reporting on what is wrong, while people who are collaborative and continuously learning look at the advantage of what CSR reporting implies. This fits with my view that the role of CSR reporting advantage in a culture of learning is to monitor corporate governance for continuous improvement, measuring performance and progress. In a negative fear based culture CSR reporting focus is on monitoring for mistakes and compliance to regulation.

John Friedman, @johnfriedman brings to the surface in his editorial on How CSR is Changing the Way We Communicate an important leadership solution in line with my view of the role of Chief Sustainability Officer as reported by Aman Singh. John maps out in this landmark editorial the method of internal communication and how it needs to be approached for the CSO in any company to effectively integrate organization culture and development with branding, sustainability strategy, risk management, corporate governance and employee relations. This editorial is a must read.

This detailed read of the people I look to most closely is supportive method and practice key to building a grass roots driven Sustainable Strategy from which economic decision makers can learn from. 3BLMedia Interviews with Leadership from Ford and Ebay provide solid case examples:

Bill Baue's interview of John Viera, Director, Sustainability &
Environmental Policy, Ford Motor Company points out a grass root method of preparedness based on stakeholder engagement. When Ford joined GM and Chrysler in Washington DC to seek bail out money; they were the only car manufacturer that arrived with a strategy; a Sustainable CSR Strategy no less, which was achieved without bail out funds. Ford met the goals of this plan within one year and is now authoring a new phase.

Chris Jarvis captured Senior Manager, Sustainability Communications for eBay, Annie Lescroat's story of a grassroots community driven team of "RATS" who formed a Green Initiative at Ebay from a voluntary view and launched a "green initiative," that did not require economic decision maker view. This activity a year later came to the attention of the economic decision makers. From my perspective this case study providesview provided a solid example of how "natural leaders within a social network, can innovate change and educate economic decision makers on the "value of green," and begin to exercise the application of "triple bottom line."

Sustainable Strategy is not an either or in action. Bringing sustainability to life through people by actively engaging all stakeholders does not change a CEO's job responsibility job responsibility of governance and monitoring by managing the bottom line. However, a CEO who leads from a point of view of learning and possibilistic risk management will not turn focus monitoring as a compliance activity to engender fear.

A CEO who leads monitoring as a continuous improvement program of learning will do his job and lead a company that guides all stakeholders to contribute through learning and experience from that type of culture an experience of accomplishment and a work environment that invites discipline, rigor and creative contribution. and creating an obstacle to the activity. CEO's who lead to promote learning to put sustainable strategy in action, will guide a company or organization culture that values integration of branding, risk management, corporate governance employee relations as a means to carry out a sustainable strategy in any sector (commercial, non profit, government or academic).

Whether a company chooses to include a CSO in their organization chart or not, there is no "how to manual," to carry out a sustainable strategy in any structure of business or institutional sector today. A company cannot come to life and be sustainable as Mindy Lubber described in her strong message about integration. No matter what way, you cut it - Sustainable Strategy is about integrating a workforce and assuring a revenue model where the income, expense and profit are designed out of conversation that brings a sustainable strategy to life from the hard work of people who work to wisely to live well and learn "a new normal."

May 11, 2010

At the end of Ceres 2010, Mindy Lubber, President of Ceres, held a conference debrief session with Bill Baue.

Here is
Mindy's statement in brief,

"Sustainability has to be integrated to what we do.. our earnestness and starting on solutions is more rapid than before...the goal of our conference is about taking it up a new notch and setting up a series of new best practices...working with companies to integrate sustainability into everything they do... products, facilities, holding supply chain accountability and tying that to CEO compensation and all they do."

Mindy went on to quantify what she means by a new and higher standard,"Setting new standards, higher standards and acting more quickly and comprehensively. It is no longer about one off deals, e.g. carbon footprint or energy efficiency, ....every part of a strategic plan ,--- climate change, water shortages, human rights, worker safety...hence results at every level of the firm."

Finally, Mindy pointed to the greatest challenge America faces now of societal scale. "Paralysis in our nation's capital has to stop relative to climate, water and more. Are we continuing to build a society around fossil fuels and have more oil spills or build an economy around Clean Tech so that the US does not become a player left behind in the dust?"

You can view the full interview of Mindy Lubber by Bill Baue here on 3BLMedia TV.

Along with reviewing all of #Ceres10 media, in recent weeks I have been investigating other strong messages.

A "Why so Few?" released by The American Association of University Women, provides a very powerful "strong" hidden message. The report is a summary of research conducted by AAUW to examine why so few women work in STEM careers. This report provides a complete summary of the obstacles that stand in the way of women succeeding in careers as scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians.

In reading this report, I discovered a hidden jewel that in my opinion is stronger than the research outcome. It is the implications of the research on what this implies to the US culture of education and its preparation of people for professions based on STEM studies. These implications go beyond the study of diversity and gender. They leadership issues faced by institutional leaders and economic decisions makers that are obstructing US Society to accelerate in the direction of need described by Mindy Lubber.

This report underscores the realities that our economy is faced with today as follows:

1. The future of our world relies on science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We have structured our research and commercial centers that generate products and services based on these disciplines with a push for rapid forms of production that derail the quality of learning for the people who carry out this work and therefore has production cycle of knowledge and product generation that is not productive for society today.

2. The culture of these institutions is critical, negative and competitive and does not create healthy environments in which people can learn through hard work to succeed.

3. The culture of pedagogical learning is out of date. US Education needs to embrace a form of learning that recognizes difficulty and the frustration of learning that does not come easy.

This is the most useful learning for today. Risk does not include encouraging and building learning environments where the heightened potential for risk is equated with is a potential for failure that is truly part of any path of success to discover complex answers and applications of knowledge.

The implications of this report to Mindy Lubber's strong message is basic to encouraging new formats of learning and building new economic models for government, research, academic institutions and commercial interests. I coach my clients on the necessity of strong
messages and why.

The why is simple: organization culture has to embrace the creation of value for encouragement and accomplishment as critical keys to her success. I advise all my clients to ignore personal reactions to negativity, criticism and competitive aspects of the culture and build a matrix of activity that can define a new format of success by monitoring and measuring accomplishment as a focus which in turn will result in sales.

When designing a culture of change I can develop a program that catalyzes sustainable sales and income to this company because the emerging sustainable culture looks to this as part of any company brand.What Mindy Lubber delivered in her strong message can only be built by leading a culture that embraces this format of learning and education. It implies a culture of change, ethic and consciousness of practice that is what I know many men and women now include in their work.

Mindy Lubber's powerful message catalyzes for any leader today their role in leading a strategy of action and operations agenda that gets down to business as needed and not business as usual for health, environment and people. This is the mandate now for all CSR and sustainability leaders to learn in good company of others through the frustration of learning that embraces the "failure of learning" as part of the reward of success.

Watch for my next post on "governance" versus leaning to form brand." drawn from conversation between Jeffrey Hollender, Chairman of Seventh Generation and Aman Singh, CSR Editor for Vault.com.

May 10, 2010

A few activities in recent weeks have me focused on the idea of appreciating a new standard in social media and journalism for #sustainnow. #SUSTAINNOW is a new hashtag list I have created at @workecology.There are few people in my advice network that really got me thinking on this, that include Chris Laszlo, Aman Singh, Elaine Cohen, Christine Arena, Mario Velandi, Chris Jarvis and Bill Baue. #sustainnow follows most of these folks live as they write and think.

This set me thinking about my experience in health care early in my career where I was a participated as a team member in the deployment of the first automated medical record system. From this experience and how my career has formed to date, I have been able to shape my thought leadership to a degree of strategy that I am now implementing with my partner, Bernie Kelly in Australia. Over the past year, I have discovered a formation of inquiry that I have shaped to translate into practice with Bernie and his community in Australia.

A recent announcement from Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia plan to refocus the Australian Health Care System from a point of view of coaching, learning and education is aligned with the value proposition for the program we have shaped.

The WeCare Design Plan for Health that I have designed for Bernie's network program implies a thought leadership and form of engagement that is a Road Map to Sustainable Health very aligned with the thinking and practice reported out of the recent CERES 2010 Conference that took place in Boston this week. Through out the week, many of the colleagues, I feature at #sustainnow have provided coverage of this conference that has been recorded and archived at 3blmedia through a partnership with Ceres (pronounced "series).

Late Friday afternoon, I spoke briefly with Greg Schneider,
co-founder and CEO of 3BLMedia. I informed Greg that I was shaping a series of posts I would describe as #sustainnow based in part on the CERES archive at 3BLMedia.com . These posts will integrate with some of my other recent research, conversations and recent articles authored by In Good Company with @VaultCSR's, Aman Singh.I indicated to Greg, I had been tracking and formulating a view and perspective drawn from many of the people, thoughts, ideas and quality analysis on #sustainnow for the past six months. I now feel that this community has set a new standard for journalism on the subject of sustainability that many claim is hard to define.

This community, I believe is defining sustainability well beyond the vision articulated by many of the heroes at the frontier, who have influenced my work e.g. Hazel Henderson, John Elkington, Art Kleiner and Muhammad Yunus. Please watch this blog for more thoughts as I am able to write on this new standard of thought in journalism that inspires learning to know and act.Follow the development of this thinking as I shape it on Twitter @workecology and subscribe to announcements of my posts or learn more from the community I have formed at #sustainnow